WideNine

Good points all around, and I don't mind being wrong. I kind of felt folks had a chip on their shoulder that was purely griping and negative slant towards Lamar being able to win using his athleticism and legs. Those don't last as long as a good arm - I get it, so there is some merit to the argument of how long those QBs can be effective. That being said, he has those tools now and should use them. I don't think he has a great arm to thread the needle, but he can hit guys when they are clearly open and our corners tend to play off their man. If Lamar has hit a ceiling with his passing ability then his window to be a true game changer will gradually close on him as teams simply adjust to stopping the runs, or if he injures himself in a way that slows him down and limits his running ability as an option. Not talking cheap shots, a player can get turf-toe, sprains, or pulled hammy's without even being touched. But yeah, the plan should still be to make him throw to beat you.

Was going to argue with you, but just pure passing you are right. But many former QBs and analysts have seen that he is making better plays and better decisions with the ball. I think this is born out by his QBR that takes into account what he does to help each play succeed: 73.9 in 2019 83.0 in 2020 But passing is still his weak point and it is interesting to note that his passing stats have gone down this year - begs the question of whether a ceiling has been reached or if he is just having a down year with the way teams are playing him. Be more telling if the trend continues next year.

But he is sooo good at being hated with that weener nose and punchable face Would like to see the Bills just shut him up, but would have no ***** to give if he ever jumps on the Bills bandwagon - he's a clown.

Because he has improved at hitting more of his receiving options this year while still being so much of a running threat that teams purposefully rob the secondary to stop it. It is a mistake to think that only Allen is progressing and that other QB's like Lamar and Mayfield are just spinning their wheels. I do think that it is fair and accurate to say that Allen has made the biggest leap as an NFL passer and is realizing more of his god-given talents.

This to me is the true wild card of the game - and sorry for the length... get like this when hyped up for a Bills game. Allen has faced 3 defenses that are statistically better than the Ravens this year in regards to avg yds/game in the Rams, Steelers, and the 49ers. The Colts are ranked just behind the Ravens and came on their last few games. That was a very good 11-win wild-card team - the AFC has talented, competitive teams. Allen did get frustrated and tried to do too much on one play with Indy (the fumble), BUT Allen is not the same QB he was when he faced the Ravens last year. I think he has faced more blitzes than any other QB in the league this season and the reason is that defenses are desperate to take away his time and get in his head. His arm and talent is just that scary. They know that sitting back he will pick them apart. That, and he has a lot more weapons that he can leverage to beat teams and coverages. The Ravens have not faced Allen 2.0 with all these weapons and I think that is an advantage going in. Folks can talk all they want about a player improving, but last impressions are more lasting. Many teams we faced this year their defenses went in with respectful words but seemed very confident they could bottle up Allen and a bit skeptical that he was that good this year. They came away with a much different take - thinking of recent interviews with 49er defensive players. For reference: https://www.syracuse.com/buffalo-bills/2021/01/bills-josh-allen-reminds-richard-sherman-of-aaron-rodgers.html The flip side you have to consider is that the same could be said of the Bills who had success against Lamar, but may find that he will opt to hit more of his outlet receivers, RBs in the flat, TE's, and Brown than he did last year. So, I think the keys for our Bills are: Allen does not let them disrupt his mental timing early (Indy sent a lot of blitz pressure packages early to try to "speed-up" Allen's mental clock and get him to bail early on the pocket. They also wanted to have him press more and make early mistakes). Remembering that throwing the ball away beats taking a sack deep or turning it over early in the game and gives Daboll and the coaches some idea early of how the Ravens are attacking our offense so they can counter. Allen needs to keep his cool and trust his pocket as long as he can, and be willing to chuck it into the stands if needed. Limit turnovers - obvious one. Field position - Need to pin the Ravens deep and make them work the length of the field - this is because I just cannot help but wonder what Bills defense shows up and more field just helps our D either make a play or hope that the Ravens misfire on execution. Hold blocks long enough on some of their blitzes to hit some deeper shots off their cover-0 looks to burn their blitz - if Allen, Brown, and Diggs can make them think twice about sending the house we may be able to force them into more predictable defensive postures. If they back off of press defense because of Diggs and Smoke's speed then hit the come-back routes. Allen leverages quick outlet options behind blitzing players - Knox, or releasing RB's to extend drives. They will not respect our runs, but if we can key off when they drop into coverage and abandon the box we need to be able to burn that with just enough runs to leverage play action and slow the rush. Defense - don't play on your heels, get some push on their line to disrupt blocking/timing, wrap-up and tackle to stop the run and limit RAC. Pass defense focused on taking away Lamar's favorite targets and accept that we are going to give up some odd passes to other receivers with our focus on stopping the run and taking Lamar out of his passing comfort zone is key. A tough match-up, but competitors want to go against those that push them to their limits. Iron sharpens iron - Go Bills!

Folks say that till we have a game with high winds and bad weather and passing becomes less an option. Or till the mid-game thread and fans are watching our offense cool their heels while an opposing team runs through us like a hot knife through butter churning out 1st downs and eating up the clock and scoring. Then the howling begins about our run D stopping an opposing team's ability to run on us and how we let leads slip away. I believe that it has been a pass-first league with how the rules have been adjusted the past few years to protect QBs and benefit receivers, but we should keep in mind that the NFL competition committee purposely pushed to limit holding calls on offensive lines this year too. This has benefited the running game for teams that emphasize that offensive ability - hence the success of the Ravens and Titans this year. A balanced team is still better than a lopsided one for these reasons. We are what we are this season and have overcome a lot and had good bounces too. May the football gods continue to smile on us.

Even PFT who have been pretty consistent Bills fans this season. Most feel that Baltimore does not have to worry about the Bills run game - at all seeing how they handled Henry and can crowd the LOS and then drop just about everyone into coverage leaving a 3 or 4 man rush, or blitz randomly. This makes getting the right protections called and finding the open man more tough. The flip side of this is the Bills have been gashed on defense by balanced teams with good runners and the Ravens are more balanced than last year by still running the ball well yet strategically using their TEs and Brown more. So no surprises that the two areas where we have struggled this year - effectively running the ball and stopping the run are considered reasons we could end up on the wrong side of this contest. The recent showing against Indy where they shredded our defense late did not instill a lot of confidence. A lot riding on how Allen plays. It's not like he has not faced a ton of all-out blitzing this year and Diggs is a baller, if Smoke steps up, and Beasley is healthy, I don't see the Ravens able to cover all of them. We will see. Weather may be a factor with possible snow, but I always thought bad weather favored the running teams....the Bills RB filling in for Moss could have a good game alongside motor too. Hard to wait for this one.

Mitch is not going to run again for Senate. I can see that GOP partisan strong-man feeling like his best legacy will be to exorcise Trump from the Republican party before he exits into the political sunset. It is clear to the Republican old guard where following Trump leads... straight to the most extreme elements of our society that seem fine standing cheek to jowl with white supremacist, Q-Anon conspiracy lunatics, and fascist anarchist willing to commit crimes like kidnapping, murder, and/or sedition. Not quite the party of law and order, more like a circus freak show. They were fine letting Trump pour on the lies like gasoline on a MAGA dumpster fire as long as it only meant more money flowing into Super PACs, and that they could collect votes from the Trump cult. It's just that they thought that somewhere along the lines a sociopath like Trump was going to reel it in and morph into something resembling a respectable, responsible President and do the right thing, concede the Biden victory, and transition the government for the next administration. Amazing to me that they could have miscalculated so badly reading that man. Talk about living in an alternate reality. Cowering in DC they found they could not put the genie back into the bottle. Too late they realized just how much they underestimated the shear lunacy of Trump supporters and just how far he was willing to let them go before he issued a calculated "go home" couched in the same lies fueling his martyrdom narrative that the election was stolen. The same narrative of lies that got them riled up to begin with.

you could have said that you took a home Covid test that came back positive... just kidding. Seriously though - sorry to hear.

Dang... I could not find the archived story, but was surprised at how many golf cart related felonies there were around Buffalo

I still remember a few years back where some drunken idiot stole one of the security golf carts and got all the way to the Peace Bridge before they stopped him. I hate to say it, but the odds are pretty good that if you get a few thousand Bills fans together there will be some idiots. About the same for most NFL teams if you end up in the wrong section, or hockey games I have gone to.

Trump had no intention of promoting a peaceful march. This is just pure sophistry. He has shown zero remorse for inciting that riot because he is an amoral sociopath - he is literally incapable of remorse. If you cannot objectively look at the lies and actions that man has taken abusing his Presidency, the assessments of his lack of character from those who have worked directly with him, then you are another rank and file hopeless Trump apologist. Props for the Orwell reference BTW. I admit I have always felt the "cancel culture" mirrored his "Newspeak". While Trumps indoctrination efforts and willing embrace of Q-Anon and peddling conspiracy theories mirrored "Doublespeak". We live in Orwellian times.

Am not shocked there were a lot of mistakes made. In typical fashion our bureaucracy is cartoonish in their responses to security threats. After 911 it was determined that we had too many departments that made coordinating security efforts and counter-terrorism slow and inefficient. Our government response was to create another department "DHS" - irony much? Both Sergeant's at Arms for the House and Senate and others who could have properly prepared were worried about "optics"... The DC Police early on either refused or were rebuffed by members of our government from having National Guard troops deployed early. When asking for emergency deployment during the insurrection, the National Guard slow-walked their response because there was a lot of push-back earlier in the year on their heavy-handed approach to peaceful demonstrations where no buildings were damaged, federal property trespassed on, or lives lost. Although Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser requested on Tuesday that the D.C. Guard be sent in, she legally was unable to activate the military force. Only after neighboring states activated their personnel did Pence push acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller to send in the full guard. Christopher Miller’s rapid ascension to acting Pentagon chief was announced by Trump on Monday as he fired Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper, who fell out of favor after disagreeing with the president over his threat in June to use active-duty military forces to quell unrest in America’s streets. “I am pleased to announce that Christopher C. Miller, the highly respected Director of the National Counterterrorism Center (unanimously confirmed by the Senate), will be Acting Secretary of Defense, effective immediately,” Trump tweeted. “Chris will do a GREAT job! Mark Esper has been terminated. I would like to thank him for his service.” On a side note: I am not a fan of CNN's blatant and irresponsible attempts at stirring up racial tensions. I also think they have a heavy-handed approach when reporting on our Police forces across the nation. As any pragmatic person can see, we had some bad apples in the Capital Police force and of course they gave that top billing, but the vast majority were very brave and honorable men and women, black and white, that stood a thin blue line against odds they could never overcome. CNN runs stories asking "why so few arrests compared to BLM marches", it infuriates me because it does not help this nation heal. THINK. You have a mob of nearly 8000 riotous protesters descending on a few 100 policeman trying to hold that tsunami back and you think they had time to arrest and process rioters. Have they seen the pictures of that mob dragging away barricades with cops trying to hold out? Irresponsible and unfair to those many brave folks where their jobs quickly turned to simply surviving and trying to stall so that our leaders could get to safety.

Not only have Trump supporters left their trail of turds evidence online, but they seem completely ignorant of the federal sedition statute and sentencing guidance. I will attempt to educate some of them here. Cliff notes because reading is hard - basically up to 20 years prison and many DC rioters qualify. Trump will get off with a slap while many of his ardent gullible drones will have 20 years behind bars to think about how dumb they were to follow him. https://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-charges/sedition.html

So he said that the Latino community is more politically diverse in Florida.... how insensitive. This whole thread is one reach after the next using piss-poor right-wing parody sites, propaganda sites, and dubious tweets as some kind of lame attempt to try to paint Biden as somehow being as offensive as Trump. Stupid derogatory, politically incorrect, misogynistic, inflammatory, divisive, and racial ***** flows out of Trump like diarrhea. So bad that one of these guys is going for round 2 of getting fired as President and had a muzzle put on his social media accounts. Who was that again?

Yeah, during a game. But I get a sense that he does not try to make it a punishment rather giving a player time to collect themselves. Usually does not seem to carry over to the next game either. Look at Knox...he has had plenty of gaffes, but when healthy they just keep putting him out there. McD seems to believe in patient development as long as the player is putting in the work and showing improvement. Probably a better way to reach young players today.

Jeeez give it up. Your Hitler wanna-be lost because more voters think he sucks.

As he fills cabinet post with a diversity of individuals, whereas Trump's looked like Hitler's inner circle. Give it up already trying to paint sleepy Joe as cut from the same cloth as that bloated festering orange boil on our nation's butt that is soon to be lanced.

The magadumbs that have gone too far also left a Parler trail of turds for law enforcement to follow... https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/01/parlers-amateur-coding-could-come-back-to-haunt-capitol-hill-rioters/

Breitbart.

Had a way with words. "I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity" Kind of sums up most of 2020 for me except for our Buffalo Bills. Man did they help provide a lift.

This. If anything history has taught us is that McD does not sit someone because they had a bad game.

I worry about him all the time. So much rides on that position being played well in this defense. If he is nursing a hammy there goes his biggest contribution to the defense - his ability to cover those shallow sideline to sideline routes. Man...injuries this year have been rough.

It's sad really. How weak so many Trump followers are. Willing to put that self-serving demagogue on some kind of messianic pedestal. To abandon facts, reason, and critical thinking. Willing to embrace the most far-flung conspiracies and excuses rather than the simple truths of that incredibly flawed man. It is so easy and painfully obvious to watch Trump follow the dictator handbook to seizing power. Attack the free press and facts. Fake news. Push propaganda outlets that can further his agenda as "real news". Lie, lie, obfuscate, and lie more. Use divisive rhetoric with nationalistic overtones to paint some as true Americans and others as the enemy. Create a subculture to draw in primarily white non-urban voters that feel marginalized by society. Attack whistle-blowers and coopt agencies that are intended to be checks on Presidential abuse of power with those who are loyal to him. Trump demands personal loyalty to him over our country and laws. Fix elections so you always win. Tried very hard to do this with his clumsy attack on USPS and mail-in ballots, but Congressional Dems stepped up, judges stepped in, voters jumped through hoops, stood in long lines during a pandemic, voted early, drove to remote ballot locations, and went through extraordinary efforts to stop him. Many saw the dangers of where 4 more years of unchecked Trump abuse of the Office of the Presidency could lead. We see the fruits of his 1st term efforts already. Even many republican voters sensed the real danger Trump posed. They voted Biden at the top of their ballots and GOP for open Congressional seats on the lower portion of the ballots. The last thing he would have done in the playbook used by the Putin's and Erdogan's of the world would have been an attempt to remove term limits. With how little regard our GOP representatives have for our democracy, they would have gone along with it. Damn close folks...we need to never allow someone with those glaring character flaws ever to hold that office again.

so......the other 7,999 "protesters" wagging around Trump 2020 signs, wearing their MAGA hats, breaking into federal property, trashing the place, threatening our elected officials, trying to kidnap our elected officials, killing a police officer, desecrating democracy while wrapped in flags???? So far it looks like a pile of brainless Trump idiots have been swept up in the ongoing criminal investigation. Not that I do not trust a tweet from a woman who has been a far-right propaganda machine (sarcasm), but I think the investigation by law enforcement will paint a clearer picture on all those involved - except Trump the instigator of the coup attempt.